Tuesday, 29 January 2013

Curved Seams Dress...

This month, I'm joining in with Rikka, over at Ricochet and Away, for the Curved Seams Challenge. I was keen to tackle the challenge, as it involved learning a new skill: sewing flat, curved seams.

Initially, I thought I'd make a dress. Then I changed my mind a few times, thinking I might make a bag, then a small quilt and eventually came back to my original idea of a dress.

I knew I had enough fabric left over from the stripes and polka dot dress, to make another dress in the same style, although a little smaller. Once again, I've used the Good Deeds Dress pattern by Elysium; a pattern created specifically for charity sewing.

After looking at lots of pictures on the Curved Seams Pinterest board and following many links, I settled on the following two tutorials to guide me on my new venture:

I cut random, gentle curves and it all came together surprisingly quickly.

Above is the back view of the dress and below the front. The curved seams are not as obvious as they might be on a non-gathered item, but that was the effect I was after. I am so pleased, that what was in my head translated to the actual project.

The stripes and polka dot curved seams dress turned out exactly as I had envisaged and I'm really happy with it, but I had some Alexander Henry, Willow Grove, and I could picture another dress I wanted to make, this time with one curved seam going horizontally around the dress. Instead of a plain band at the bottom of the dress, I thought I'd make a wavy band, using my newly acquired knowledge of curved seams.

Here is the Willow Grove fabric on top of a navy blue (not sewn yet). They look great together, don't they. I cut the navy fabric and sewed the curved seam. Hmmm.... Some of the curves were puckered. Not exactly what I'd planned. Back to the tutorials to see where I'd gone wrong. Both tutorials stressed... gentle curves, with no steep hills or valleys. I recut the fabric, with gentler curves, but some seams were still puckered, so obviously not gentle enough. At this point, I decided that this was a project for another day.

Making the puckered seams is not a bad thing, as making mistakes is part of the learning process, although perhaps best learnt on a cheaper piece of fabric.

Thanks, Rikka, for yet another challenging challenge. I've thoroughly enjoyed learning how to make curved seams. This is the ninth challenge I've done with Rikka, each one enabling me to learn a new sewing skill or technique.

I'll be adding this dress to the OngoingDresses for Girls link party, here at Threading My Way. As of today, there are 240 fabulous dresses in the collection. I'd love you to add any dresses you have made.

30 comments:

Congrats on meeting the challenge, Pam! I love how the two prints work together. I've been dealing with some puckering in my curved seams as well--frustrating! Again, I love the dress and I'm sure there's a little girl who'll love it too!

Wow, I love this dress, the colors and the technique you used. Thanks for giving us the links to the sites that you have used to learn this technique, I visited and save it to my favorites because is very well explained. This is something that I have to try one day. The project you chose to take part to the challenge is lovely, really lovely. It's more beautiful to know that you're going to send this dress to Dress A Girl Around the World!!!! I hope you do not mind I pinned on Pinterest!Marisa fromhttp://passionetcouture.blogspot.ca/

Your dress looks great! I am a seamstress myself, but have never taken on the challenge of flat curves. I found your blog through project inspire. I have followed you and hope that you will stop by and follow me back! Thanks - Mandyhttp://www.nstitchesdesigns.blogspot.com

I love your curved dress. A nice change to a gathered skirt. I sew for the charity Tender Loving Care who sends dresses to the children in need in the Applachians. They need clothes to go to school in so if anyone is interested they could use help also